Mid-America Apartment Cmtys., Inc. v. Philipson, No. 2:23-cv-2186-SHL-cgc (July 30, 2025)

Case details
Full caption
Mid-America Apartment Communities, Inc. v. Dennis Michael Philipson
Country
United States
Jurisdiction
Federal
Decided
July 30, 2025
Majority
Sheryl H. Lipman (C. J.) (unanimous Court)
MID-AMERICA APARTMENT COMMUNITIES, INC., Plaintiff, v...., Slip Copy (2025) © 2025 Thomson Reuters. No claim to original U.S. Government Works.12025 WL 2625359Only the Westlaw citation is currently available.United States District Court, W.D.Tennessee, Western Division.MID-AMERICA APARTMENTCOMMUNITIES, INC., Plaintiff,v.DENNIS MICHAEL PHILIPSON, Defendant.No. 2:23-cv-2186-SHL-cgc|Filed 09/11/2025Editor's Note: This decision contains citation referencesthat are incorrect or do not actually exist. These invalidcitations appeared in the original court opinion and have beenpreserved as written since they are part of the official record.Any links to these invalid citations have been removed.ORDER DENYING REQUEST FORPOST-JUDGMENT ACCOUNTINGSHERYL H. LIPMAN CHIEF UNITED STATES DISTRICTJUDGE*1 Before the Court is a document styled as a Requestfor Post-Judgment Accounting, Declination of Settlement,Enforcement Clarification, and In-Person Status ConferenceFollowing Document Disclosure, filed July 30, 2025, byDefendant Dennis Michael Philipson, who is proceedingpro se. (ECF No. 224.) Plaintiff Mid-America ApartmentCommunities, Inc. (“MAA”), did not respond to the Motion.1Although the filing addresses several issues, to the extent itseeks relief in the form of a post-judgment accounting, thatrequest is DENIED.As a starting point, almost all of the issues Mr. Philipson raisesin his filing have been rendered moot by his compliance withthe Court's requirement that he provide answers to MAA'soutstanding discovery requests, and MAA's confirmation ofits receipt of those responses. Nevertheless, Mr. Philipsonasks that he “be provided with a true and original copyof every invoice, estimate, creditor name, and accountingdocument that forms the basis of the judgment, and thatsuch materials be served in full accordance with Rule 5and Tennessee law,” as “[t]his is the minimum proceduralsafeguard necessary to ensure that I can exercise my rightsand obligations accurately, and in good faith.” (Id. at PageID3694.)It is not entirely clear what Mr. Philipson is seeking throughthis request, but the record is replete with documents that formthe basis for the judgment entered against him. The relevantprocedural history began on May 6, 2024, when the Courtentered an Order Granting Motion for Sanctions of Judgmentand Granting in Part Motion for Permanent Injunction. (ECFNo. 97.) In that Order, the Court detailed the basis for grantingMAA's Motion for Judgment and required that, “[w]ithinfourteen days of the entry of this Order, MAA shall submit adetailed description of the damages it has incurred, consistentwith the findings within this Order. To the extent a damageshearing will be necessary, the Court will set it by separateorder.” (Id. at PageID 1576.)On May 17, 2024, MAA submitted a notice with itsdescription of its damages, which included detailed costs thatit incurred in prosecuting this action. (ECF No. 99.) Amongother things, the filing detailed the number of hours MAA'sattorneys worked on the case. The notice also purportedto include two declarations that substantiated its damagesclaims, but failed to include either declaration. The Courtsubsequently informed MAA that, if it “intends to rely onthe declarations in support of its damages claims, it mustsupplement its filing with the exhibits within three days of theentry of this Order,” and gave Mr. Philipson two weeks fromany such filing to respond. (ECF No. 100.) MAA re-filed itsdescription of damages with the declarations three days later.(ECF No. 101.)On June 13, 2024, the Court entered an Order RequiringSupplementation after determining that MAA's notice wasdeficient under the Local Rules. (ECF No. 102.) TheCourt explained that the supplement, which was due withinfourteen days, “must differentiate among the hours worked byattorneys, litigation technology professionals, and paralegals,as well as their accompanying rates. MAA shall also filea declaration from another attorney in the community thatspeaks to the prevailing rate of the work completed, consistentwith the Local Rules.” (Id. at PageID 1607.)2 On July 3,2025, the Court granted MAA a brief extension of time tofile its supplementation (ECF No. 109), and, two days later,it filed two documents that provided the requested detail andbrought its damages description in compliance with the LocalRules (ECF Nos. 111 and 112). One of the filings was an
MID-AMERICA APARTMENT COMMUNITIES, INC., Plaintiff, v...., Slip Copy (2025) © 2025 Thomson Reuters. No claim to original U.S. Government Works.2affidavit from one of MAA's attorneys, and included as anattachment the detailed billing entries explaining the costsMAA incurred through the work of its counsel. (ECF No.111-1.) Mr. Philipson did not respond to those filings.*2 On November 1, 2024, after the Sixth Circuit Courtof Appeals denied Mr. Philipson's initial appeal, the Courtentered an Order Granting Motion for Entry of Judgmentand Determining Damages Award. (ECF No. 122.) ThatOrder, along with MAA's detailed submissions that formedthe basis for it, contains everything that forms the basis for thejudgment against Mr. Philipson and renders moot his requestfor a post-judgment accounting.Mr. Philipson asserts that “[i]n Tennessee, courts haveemphasized that ‘[a] judgment debtor is entitled to knowthe basis of the amounts claimed and to be informedof the identity of all parties asserting entitlement underthe judgment.’ ” (ECF No. 224 at PageID 3694 (quoting(supposedly) First Nat'l Bank of Polk Cnty. v. Goss, No.E2008-01530-COA-R3-CV, 2009 WL 2046052 (Tenn. Ct.App. July 15, 2009).) However, the case as cited does notexist, at least not outside of the realm of Mr. Philipson—orhis computer's—imagination. There is a case that includesthose parties, but the Tennessee Court of Appeals decidedit in 1995. See First Nat'l Bank of Polk Cnty. v. Goss, 912S.W.2d 147 (Tenn. Ct. App. 1995). You will not find thequote Mr. Philipson provides in that case, which dealt with thetimeliness of the filing of an appeal. And, after an exhaustivesearch, the undersigned did not find the quoted language inany order or opinion issued by any state or federal courtin this country. Given that Mr. Philipson has representedto this Court in previous status conferences that he usesartificial intelligence to generate the content in his filings,the Court suspects that the citation is fabricated, and thequote concocted, both likely created by a generative artificialintelligence tool.Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 11, “which applies to allparties, including pro se litigants, provides that when a paperis submitted to the court, ‘[a] party certifies that to thebest of the person's knowledge, ... formed after an inquiryreasonable under the circumstances: ... [the] legal contentionsare warranted by existing law[.]” Ferris v. Amazon.comServs., LLC, 778 F. Supp. 3d 879, 881 (N.D. Miss. 2025)(quoting Fed. R. Civ. P. 11(b)(2)). District courts are permittedto impose Rule 11 sanctions sua sponte. Bojicic v. DeWine,145 F.4th 668, 671 (6th Cir. 2025) (finding such sanctionsappropriate after allowing the opportunity to show cause asto why conduct did not violate Rule 11(b)); see also Fed. R.Civ. P. 11(c)(5)(B) (“The court must not impose a monetarysanction ... on its own, unless it issued the show-cause orderunder Rule 11(c)(3).”)The increased use by lawyers and non-lawyers of artificialintelligence to draft legal documents has resulted in a scourgeof fictitious case citations in court documents in recent years.Many harms flow from deceptively citing to nonexistentcase law and fabricated quotations, “including wasting theopposing party's time and money, the Court's time andresources, and reputational harms to the legal system (to namea few).” Buckner v. Hilton Glob., No. 3:24-CV-375-RGJ,2025 WL 1725426, at *7 (W.D. Ky. June 20, 2025) (quotingMorgan v. Cmty. Against Violence, No. 23-CV-353-WPJ/JMR, 2023 WL 6976510, at *8 (D.N.M. Oct. 23, 2023));see also Mata v. Avianca, Inc., 678 F. Supp. 3d 443, 448–49 (S.D.N.Y. 2023) (identifying a slew of potential harmsthat flow from the citation to fake opinions, including that“the opposing party wastes time and money in exposing thedeception”; “[t]he Court's time is taken from other importantendeavors”; “[t]he client may be deprived of arguments basedon authentic judicial precedents”; “potential harm to thereputation of judges and courts whose names are falselyinvoked as authors of the bogus opinions and to the reputationof a party attributed with fictional conduct”; “promot[ing]cynicism about the legal profession and the American judicialsystem”; and that “a future litigant may be tempted to defya judicial ruling by disingenuously claiming doubt about itsauthenticity.”)*3 Against this backdrop, “[c]ourts across the countryhave issued sanctions against attorneys and pro se partiesfor submitting fictitious case citations, fictitious quotations,and related misrepresentations to the court, including ...monetary sanctions[.]” United States v. Hayes, 763 F.Supp. 3d 1054, 1071 (E.D. Cal. 2025) (collecting cases),reconsideration denied, 2025 WL 1067323 (E.D. Cal. Apr. 9,2025). Consistent with those rulings, going forward, if Mr.Philipson files anything else in this matter and those filingscontain fictitious case citations or fictitious quotations, theCourt will consider imposing sanctions against him, includingmonetary ones.In any event, as explained above, to the extent that Mr.Philipson relies on the fake case and fake quotation tosupport his contention that, “[p]ut plainly, [he is] entitled tosee and evaluate the original documentation that forms thebasis of this judgment” (ECF No. 224 at PageID 3698), the
MID-AMERICA APARTMENT COMMUNITIES, INC., Plaintiff, v...., Slip Copy (2025) © 2025 Thomson Reuters. No claim to original U.S. Government Works.3documentation he seeks is in the record. Accordingly, hisrequest for a post-judgment accounting is DENIED.IT IS SO ORDERED, this 11th day of September, 2025.All CitationsSlip Copy, 2025 WL 2625359Footnotes1On August 27, 2025, the Court held a status conference in which it invited the parties to respond to anyoutstanding motions by September 3, 2025. (ECF No. 268.)2In and around this time, Mr. Philipson filed several documents, including a rambling, 121-page filing that hestyled as a Motion for Entry of Judgment to Terminate Proceedings Due to Perceived Procedural Misconduct,Judicial Bias, and Whistleblower Retaliation by Mid-America Apartment Communities, Inc., Employees andAffiliates (ECF No. 106), as well as a document in which he informed the Court that he would be appealing tothe Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals (ECF No. 110). None of those filings are relevant to Mr. Philipson's requestfor a post-judgment accounting, and he never responded directly to MAA's filings.End of Document© 2025 Thomson Reuters. No claim to original U.S. Government Works.
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